DANNY HARRISON insists Connah’s Quay Nomads have “got a lot to play for” after taking defeat to The New Saints “on the chin”.

Harrison and Nomads were beaten 2-0 on home soil by TNS, who jumped above their title rivals to the top of the table courtesy of clinically taken goals from Aeron Edwards and Ryan Brobbel.

But, while Saints have a weekend off, Nomads are playing host to Newtown on Friday night knowing a win would see them move two points clear at the top of the table once more.

Scott Ruscoe’s Saints will have two games in-hand, but Harrison and Nomads won’t be throwing the towel in until the title is mathematically out of their reach.

“It is a cliche, but we’ve got to keep looking after ourselves,” said the experienced midfielder.

“We’ve got a massive game now against Newtown, who had a great result against Barry. We can only concentrate on Newtown, we can’t effect TNS’ results until we play again on the last day of the season.

“We look after ourselves, prepare right and go again - that’s all we can do, we can’t look too far ahead.

“We’ve got to take care of business against Newtown.

“I don’t want to stand here and say ‘we’ve done ever so well’ and ‘it’s really close’ because that’s not in our thoughts at all. We are concentrating on Newtown and once we’ve played that we look to the next fixture.

“We’ve got a lot to play for and that was the message in the changing room after the TNS game.

“We perhaps came up a little bit short in a few crucial areas, but we take it on the chin and move on.”

Harrison accepts that Nomads ran into a clinical Saints side last weekend, the visitors hitting the hosts with two well-worked goals at crucial stages of the contest, before any faint hopes of a stirring fightback were extinguished by Michael Wilde’s straight red card.

“We started the game really well without creating too much, we penned them in, which is what we wanted to do,” said the former Chester man. “Then we wanted to make our throw-ins and free-kicks count, but the quality wasn’t there at the start of the game.

“They’ve done what they do to a lot of teams - they get a chance and they are very clinical.

“It did put us on the back-foot, but even up to the second goal going in we were pressing, playing our game and putting them under pressure.

“The second goal does take it out of you, there is no doubt about it, and the sending off compounds everything.

“It’s then really tough against a good team, who don’t need to go and score any more goals while we are trying to press, but with 10-men.

“With the players the gaffer has assembled we were always going to keep going, but it was a tough night compounded by conceding goals at crucial times.

“We were starting to get a foothold in the game and they were very clinical. Apart from those two goals John Danby has probably not had too much to do. They’ve done it time and time again where they get a chance and score.”

Andy Morrison, nominated alongside Ruscoe for the top-flight’s February Manager of the Month award, added: “I’ve got a really proud bunch and we will be at it come kick-off against Newtown.”

Wilde starts the first of his three-game ban, although Ryan Wignall and Declan Poole could feature.

Nomads’ Michael Bakare, Saints’ Danny Redmond, Ryan Kershaw, of Cefn Druids, and Aberystwyth’s Geoff Kellaway are up for February’s Player of the Month.